


Oh, How Bright the Path

by the_rat_wins



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Background Character Death, Happy Ending, M/M, Magic, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 09:14:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/911482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rat_wins/pseuds/the_rat_wins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stanisław "Stiles" Stilinski goes to California in the summer of 1870, newly eighteen, newly orphaned, and fully expecting to die within the year.</p><p>A Western frontier life AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Great Adventure

**Author's Note:**

> This comes from the feelings the _True Grit_ soundtrack gives me, and the fact that my non-fandom friend prompted me with the idea of a Stiles/Derek _Little House on the Prairie_ crossover. That isn't exactly what I've done here, but the concept proved DAMN inspirational.
> 
> Most of the Western knowledge and flavor herein is derived from _True Grit_ , the Little House books, and _Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman_ (what). That said, it's fun to do research, so I'll be doing my best to keep everything more or less historical. Let me know if something seems wildly off, and I'll work to fix!

Stanisław "Stiles" Stilinski goes to California in the summer of 1870, newly eighteen, newly orphaned, and fully expecting to die within the year.  
  
There is a train all the way from New York to San Francisco now, and that's what Stiles takes. The trip is seven days, and the ticket costs a little more than a month of his wages from Western Union, but with no more rent to pay, it doesn't matter.  
  
When his father had gone to California ten years ago, he'd taken a ship down to Panama, a mule to cross the isthmus, and then another ship all the way back up. Almost two months, in all. Stiles and his mother waited for each of his letters, describing the raucous songs of the sailors and the strange animals in the jungles of Panama. It sounded to Stiles like the very best of adventures, and he'd whined and complained that Papa had not taken them with him.  
  
Looking back, he knows how foolish he was. The look of intense relief on his mother's face with the arrival of each new letter, the paragraphs at the bottom that she wouldn't let him read . . . Hundreds had died making trips like that to California, from disease and starvation and drowning in storms. His father would never have risked his family that way. He'd been lucky to survive himself.  
  
Even though that luck had run out when he'd finally gotten there.  
  
"It was meant to be different," his mother had told him near the end, cupping a thin and gentle hand to his cheek. "We had a plan, your father and I." She smiled a little. "The best laid plans of mice and men, Stiles."  
  
But that was all she would say, about his father, about California, about anything. She'd been delirious soon after that, calling out with strange words and reaching up to touch things that weren't there. And after that, she'd lain silent and still, her eyes staring up blankly at the ceiling, even while her chest steadily rose and fell.  
  
It had almost been a relief when she had slipped away.  
  
Now, staring out the train window, watching the landscape outside blur by with sickening speed, Stiles reaches down to touch his father's final letter, folded up and tucked into his coat pocket. It had been written a week before he was killed, from the settlement where he'd been chosen as sheriff.  
  
Ten years ago, Beacon Hills had been a booming mining town, with ranches and farms surrounding it, no different from hundreds of others just like it in California. The death—the unexplained and uninvestigated murder—of the local sheriff, along with ten or so others from the town, had been regarded as tragic but not ultimately anyone's problem. It was only when the mines had run dry that people started to leave.  
  
But the town is still there, smaller now, and more settled. And Stiles is going west to lay eyes on the place where his father died, where no one had given enough thought to justice or a grieving wife and child back home to track down the killer. There is nothing to keep him in New York anymore, with his mother gone and his best friend, Scott, newly married to his sweetheart, Allison, getting ready to start their own family.  
  
 _Go west, young man,_ Stiles thinks wryly. The land of sunshine and opportunity. What opportunities are there for him? The doctor who had diagnosed his mother with consumption—although she never coughed, never spit up blood, just wasted away in front of his eyes for no clear reason that he could see—had looked at his thinness, his unhealthy pallor, and nodded gravely. Not exactly a death warrant, but it is catching, sometimes. There is usually a period between when the first family member passes and the second falls ill. No reason he can't spend his last year mourning his father as well as his mother. And no reason to do it in New York, where Scott, young and healthy and happy, with the world ahead of him, would have to watch him dying slowly.  
  
Not that he'd said that when he left.  
  
"It's a new world out there, buddy!" was what he had said, clapping a hand to Scott's shoulder. The grin that stretched across his face felt manic and forced, but Scott didn't seem to notice the difference, bless him. "New cities, new sights, nothing like us washed-up deadbeats in the east. And they need people like me, you know?"  
  
"Skinny boys who read books all the time?" Scott had replied jokingly, but with genuine confusion in his eyes. He wasn't convinced why Stiles would want to leave, especially now. He thought that Stiles should stay with him and Allison. _With_ them. In their new house. Loyal to a fault, that's Scott. But Stiles isn't going to take anyone down with him, especially not his best friend and his wife.  
  
"No, Scotty! Telegraph operators! The boys of the dots and dashes! Highly trained professionals with quick hands and sharp ears! It's a whole different story out there, you know. None of this working all crammed in one room like a bunch of sardines, covering night tricks for lazy supervisors. You're on your _own_ out there, a whole office to yourself, the only means of communication between some tiny town and the whole world. It's magical stuff, Scott. You'll see." He had laughed, choked to his own ears, but probably perfectly normal to an outside observer. "Heck, I'll send you a telegram about it, all right?"  
  
And Scott, smiling and laughing, had finally agreed.  
  
All his belongings fit in his mother's battered old suitcase: one set of nice clothes, two sets for working days, his five favorite books (it hurt to leave the rest behind, but he couldn't possibly take them all), the small gold-framed picture of his parents on their wedding day, and wrapped up in paper and tucked in a corner, his father's old Smith  & Wesson Model 1 revolver, the grip and barrel polished bright. He doesn't have ammunition for it, but he can buy that in California, he feels sure.  
  
Curling his fingers around the edge of the worn letter in his coat pocket, Stiles closes his eyes and leans against the window, hearing his father's words like he is reading them off the page.  
 __  
"All's well here, better than I could have imagined, and the townsfolk have proved to be the most welcoming and kindest people imaginable. When the railroad is finished—which shouldn't be too long now—you'll be able to join me here. Everything we dreamed, for us and for Stiles. My love to you both. Stay safe, and don't let my boy get into too much trouble while I'm gone."  
  
Underneath it all, despite the bleakness in his heart, Stiles can't repress a small stirring of excitement. True, nothing is the way his parents had planned it. He is, at eighteen, entirely alone in the world. But here he is, finally following the path they chose for him. There isn't a future for him there, not now, but there is _something_. Answers. Peace, maybe. If nothing else, a better way to die than cooped up in a telegraph office in the city.  
  
He can feel it.  



	2. The Hanging Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles makes several new acquaintances, living and otherwise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *shows up a year late with chapter 2*

After a week of travel, the constant movement of the train no longer bothers Stiles. It lulls him to sleep outside Sacramento, and carries him through the last four hours of his journey.

The screech of the brakes and the hissing of the engine jerk him out of an uneasy doze as the train pulls into the Beacon Hills station. He raises his head and peers out the window, blinking. It’s midafternoon, and late August sunlight shines through the leaves of the young trees that surround the platform. Even the sky here is different than in New York: a cool, deep blue that looks close enough to reach out and touch.

He gathers his belongings and steps up to the doorway of the train car. The wind hits his face, and he has to stop and breathe in for a long moment, his eyes fluttering shut as he drinks in the smell.

It’s green and wild, with a hint of dry grass and warm leaves on the edge of turning. He’s caught wisps of that scent before, by the park down in Brooklyn, or along one of the nicer streets on his twenty-minute walk from the subway to the telegraph office. But never like this.

“Excuse me, sir, do you need help with something?” comes a curt voice from in front of him. Stiles’s eyes jerk open, and he realizes he’s been standing in the doorway like a fool for Lord knows how long.

Blinking, he gazes down at the woman on the platform in front of him. She looks like the frontier version of a Botticelli goddess—piles of red hair pinned up tightly at the top of her head, milky pale skin, a plain but well-cut green dress with a dark bodice—but her deep-brown eyes are full of irritation. She has a hand on her hip, fingers tapping.

“I’m—I—uh—” he stutters, at a loss.

“Sir, if you have all your belongings, would you please disembark?” she says acidly. “This is the 3:07, and we have a schedule.”

Dumbly, he stares down at the gold watch chain tucked against her dress.

“Sir,” she says again, “as the agent for this station, I’m going to have to ask you—”

“Boardinghouse,” he blurts out desperately. “I—I mean, is there one? In town?”

“Of course,” she says. “The Lahey house. Large, three stories, white clapboard. It’s just on the other side of the town square. You won’t miss it.”

Definitely an order rather than a reassurance.

“Yes, I—thank you. I’m sorry,” he mumbles, finally marshaling his limbs to propel himself and his luggage out of the train and onto the platform.

Behind him, he can hear the _click, click_ of the woman’s boots— _Well-heeled has never been so apt,_ he thinks—as she walks back to the small station building.

If she’s the station agent, then there’s every possibility that she’s also . . .

He turns and stares after her, squinting through the small window. He can just see the red-haired woman sitting down at a table, and picking up—

Yes, it is. A telegraph key.

Well, so much for that idea. He turns away quickly, before she can catch him staring like some sort of job-poaching Peeping Tom. It was silly of him to imagine Beacon Hills would need a telegraph operator. It’s not a big town by any means, but big enough that someone had to have been doing the job before he got here.

On the other hand, if she’s operating on her own, maybe she would welcome him taking on a few shifts. He isn’t sure he’ll have the guts to ask her, though. Her bite is probably even worse than her bark.

As he walks down to the end of the platform, he hears the whistle shriek twice as the train begins to build up speed. The clank and clatter of the cars is deafening—but only for a few moments. As the train comes to a curve in the tracks up ahead, it lets out another whistle . . . and then it’s gone, and everything is silent.

There’s no one else on the platform, or on the little dusty side street in front of him. Just the drifting smoke from the train, lingering in the air, and then, briefly, a cricket singing out from somewhere in the grass that surrounds the platform.

He takes a deep breath, and steps onto the street. The sky overhead seems to press down.

The dirt road runs along the back of a short row of houses, and then intersects with a wider, smoother thoroughfare. Stiles grips his suitcase more firmly in one sweaty hand, and walks around the corner of the last house.

From here, he can see the town square ahead of him, and as promised, a large white house on the other side. In the middle of the square is a wide oak tree. Its branches are bare, and from the highest branch hangs a dead man.

There’s a crowd, fifty people or more, and every one of them is silent, staring up at the man’s body twisting back and forth in the breeze.

Stiles finds himself frozen in place at the sight. This isn’t his first dead body, but it is most definitely his first execution.

If that’s what this is. But then where’s the sheriff?

He manages to jerk his eyes away from the swaying body to search the crowd. On the far edge of the square is a sallow, pinched-looking man with a starched white shirt and an overly fine black jacket. A badge gleams brightly from his lapel. The man’s hair is black and slicked back, and he wears thin spectacles—not exactly the image of a tough lawman.

But no one else is looking at the sheriff. Glancing around again, Stiles studies the townsfolk, the uneasy flicker of their eyes from the body above them, to . . .

To a tall, pale woman with dark ringlets of hair standing on his right, near the base of the leafless tree. Her posture is straight and her hands are folded demurely in front of her, but there’s a cold, satisfied intensity in her gaze as she looks up at the body.

“Lahey,” Stiles hears a man behind him hiss. “Lahey, are the others still at your father’s place?”

Stiles turns, trying to catch sight of the speaker, but instead he sees a young man with blond curls nodding slowly, eyes still fixed on the corpse overhead.

“Well, shouldn’t you go get them?” says the first man, still hidden a few people back.

“No,” says the dark-haired woman, although Stiles would have guessed she was too far away to hear the exchange. “Leave them. They’ll be on their way soon enough.”

“But, Miss Blake—” says the first man. Stiles leans back enough to catch a glimpse: the man is tanned and fine-boned, with a look of disdain marring his otherwise handsome face.

“I said to leave it, Jackson,” Miss Blake replies, and the man falls silent. “Isaac,” she continues, turning to the curly-haired one, who cringes a little under her gaze. “Go to your father’s. Stay there. Make sure they’re packing.”

“Yes, Miss Blake,” Isaac mutters, and he starts pushing his way through the crowd.

“This is madness,” says Jackson, and there’s a rising murmur of agreement, like the buzz of angry bees. “A railroad official, strung up in the middle of town, and all you have to say is—”

“Mr. Wittemore,” says the sheriff, and his flat, nasal voice cuts through the murmur. “Someone is going to have to climb up there and cut the man down. If you have any more to say, I think you may find that it’s you.” Jackson’s mouth snaps shut, and he glares mutinously.

The spell is broken. Everyone starts talking loudly, some people arguing and pointing, others running to get a ladder, a saw for the branch.

Stiles stands still in the middle of the fray, dumbstruck, his suitcase clutched close to his body.

“And who might you be?”

He turns slowly. Miss Blake is studying him, her lips curved in a seemingly friendly smile—but her eyes are sharp, and rove over his face and body, cataloging everything about him.

“Me? I’m . . . my name is Stiles,” he manages. Revealing his last name feels unwise, all things considered. “I was just . . . I just got off the . . .” He gestures in the direction of the train platform with his free hand.

“Of course,” she says smoothly, and hooks his arm in hers, steering him away from the square. “What a terrible shock. I’m so sorry. But I hope you won’t think the worst of us.” Her voice is soothing, running over and around him like a stream, and it’s all he can do to keep his head as she sails across the street, towing him in her wake.

“I—no, I’m sure it was—” he starts, and then doesn’t know what to say next. Justified? An accident? Just one of those things? Luckily, before he can finish what is sure to be a disastrous sentiment, Miss Blake cuts in.

“And what brings you to Beacon Hills, Mr. Stiles? Business or pleasure?”

Huh. For all the time he had to sit and think on the way here, it hadn’t occurred to him to come up with any reasonable-sounding cause for his trip. A major tactical oversight, in retrospect. I’m here to die in the place my father was murdered is undoubtedly a bit too weighty for casual conversation.

“I’m here to take care of some family business,” he finally manages. That’s nice and nonspecific—and not one word a lie.

“Oh, you have family here?” says Miss Blake. She’s not very subtle. Or is he being paranoid?

Maybe a little paranoia is the best course of action, come to think of it.

“It was some years ago,” he hedges. “Oh, and you’ve brought me to the Lahey house, haven’t you? So thoughtful. Can’t thank you enough. I’d certainly shake your hand, but you know, the dust of the road and all that. And trains are even worse, don’t you think? Soot.” He untangles his arm from her grip. “Do hope to see you again, ma’am. Thank you for your help.” And he fumbles the front door open, backing through it as quickly as he can. Judging from the glimpse of Miss Blake’s face he catches before the door swings shut, she’s stunned, either by his rudeness or his nimble escape from her interrogation.

He lets out a sigh of relief, then steels himself and turns around to face whatever else the afternoon has in store for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Tags will change as the story develops! ;)


End file.
